30 DAYS OF NIGHT: BLOODSUCKER TALES #1

By: Kurt Amacker
Review Date: Wednesday, November 03, 2004

BLOODSUCKER TALES is the newest title in IDW's wildly successful 30 DAYS OF NIGHT series (or "series of miniseries," I suppose). The brainchild of horror maven Steve Niles, the first series was released in 2002 and it depicted the invasion of Barrow, Alaska by vampires (from New Orleans, no less) during the winter, when the sun doesn't rise for a month. There have been three miniseries to date and an annual. BLOODSUCKER TALES is the first issue of the new ongoing series.

The first issue is divided in half between two stories. The first, "Dead Billy Dead" is written by Niles and drawn by my fellow Louisiana native, Kody Chamberlain. It is the tale of a male vampire whose companion was killed in one of the assaults on Barrow in one of the previous series. More accurately, it's the story of Billy being chased through an alley and bitten by said vampire. The lonely bloodsucker wants Billy to be with him and advises him not to struggle. I'll leave you to find out what happens next.

Niles's writing is as sharp as ever and he maintains the continuity so many other comic books lack. Thus far, every 30 DAYS OF NIGHT story has dealt with the reverberations of the first assault on Barrow. It creates a rich sense of history that rewards the reader that takes the time to read all of them from the beginning. Chamberlain's art is nicely done. His characters are more detailed and less abstract than his backgrounds, with flat, dirty colors that capture the mood well. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of this story. But, because it ends halfway through the book, it only serves as bait for the next issue. It's disheartening because the next story isn't really as strong.

"Juarez or Lex Nova & The Case of the 400 Dead Mexican Girls" is based on the real-life murders and disappearances of between 200 and 400 Mexican women in Juarez, Mexico click here to learn more). Written by Matt Fraction and drawn by series veteran Ben Templesmith, this is the first 30 DAYS story not written by Niles. Frankly, it shows. Templesmith's abstract, almost cartoon-like art has always served the series well, but it loses something when set against the lighter-colored backgrounds of Juarez and some of the story's other locales, such as a morgue, a café, and the lair of three vampire clowns. You read it right clowns. The story's protagonist is the title character, Lex Nova a private detective who travels to Juarez to investigate the murders. Nova is a bit unbalanced, as he speaks his inner-monologue aloud while he queries the staff of a café during his investigation. The light touch of black humor sometimes found in this series is abandoned in favor of something more irreverent and boring. When the story switches to the vamp-clowns, Fraction spends two pages having the male vamp-clown yell "Bingo!" and "Bingo zero!" while his two female counterparts slaughter a few men they've lured into their posh, yellow lair. The point comes at the end, when they see a newspaper headline about the Juarez murders and decide their missing companion, Uncle Zero, must be responsible. You guessed it road trip. I realize that Fraction's not positing that a vampire is actually responsible for all those murders/disappearances, but these things work better when there's a bit of time and distance between the real incident and the fictitious conjecture. There's no hard and fast rule about that, but it's just my gut reaction.

This book would work better if it just dealt with individual story arcs of a few issues, rather than as an anthology series. Anthology books rarely work, given the brevity of most monthly comics. When they do, it's usually something like EC Comics, where there's some kind of cheap scare at the end. I would rather BLOODSUCKER TALES just give six issues to a single story arc, instead of dividing the issue in half.

Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think at feedback@cinescape.com.